When we start an improv show, we often begin by asking the audience for a suggestion.
Why do we do that? It’s not as if we can’t create a scenario out of nothing.
Simply put, it’s a promise. It’s a way of saying to the audience:
See? We couldn’t possibly have rehearsed this because it’s based on your suggestion.
I still recall with a mixture of mortification and pride, the evening that an early improv team of mine got the suggestion - prunes. Eagerly, we leapt into action and what followed was 45 minutes of prune-based material. Cooking prunes, eating prunes, talking about prunes, we couldn’t get enough of them. There was one moment where an improvisers strode on stage and initiated by saying:
Give me your wallet!
And I remember thinking in that moment Oh god, thank goodness, this is it, we’re finally moving on from the prune stuff.
And then, no joke, the other improviser turned to the audience, raised their hands to their cheeks in a classically fearful pose **and said in a high, clear voice, ringing with triumph:
Oh no, I’m being mugged by a giant prune.
And then my head exploded and I never did improv again. True story!
But moving on from #PruneGate, this week I want to talk about suggestions. Not the words themselves, but the way we interrogate them for meaning.
Classically, after the suggestion is given there’s a time for reflection built into the form. In an Armando someone gives a monologue inspired by the suggestion. In a Harold, you have a group game where people attempt to break down the word into its component meanings and inspirations.
The suggestion is a stone thrown into a mill pond. The ripples that follow are us unpacking that idea into scene work.
Typically, you can do that through premise-based scenes or totally organically. I’ve struggled to find clear definitions for these two methodologies, probably because at their core they have a lot in common, but here’s my attempt.
Premise is where you take an idea from a monologue or group game and then identify the essential engine of its comedy. It’s not about repeating it word for word in a scene, it’s about extrapolating the machinery that makes it funny (or interesting) and applying it in a new context. I’m trying not to say game of the scene here because game has so many contexts in improv, but if you come from a school that uses the phrase, yes, I’m talking about that. So if the suggestion inspires a story about losing your keys all the time, a premise-based reaction to that would be to do a run of scenes where characters lose things of increasing importance and with ever more impactful consequences. It’s about taking the kernel of an idea and heightening it.
Organic is harder to pin down. It’s a will-o'-the-wisp of a concept, constantly dancing just out of reach. My best attempt is that you let the details of the suggestion affect you in an emotional rather than intellectual way. So for that same story about losing your keys, you might enter the scene as a character who feels frustrated or panicky - all you take is the emotional context of the situation. Or you might be inspired by the fact that keys open doors to do a scene where your character is emotionally available and open about themselves.
Once again, these concepts are up for debate and many improvisers will do a mix of both, anchoring a scenario inspired by the suggestion into a relationship-based scene, for example. But recently, I was pressed by one of my students to make a distinction and what I eventually said was:
Premise requires you to come up with a concept for the scene ahead of time, then your job is to communicate that succinctly to your scene partner. An organic inspiration is a gift that you give to yourself alone.